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Former Denver Bronco Simon Fletcher speaks to Fort Morgan Optimist Clubs about the value of work

Simon Fletcher offers challenge to Fort Morgan youths, adults

By Jenni Grubbs

Times Staff Writer

Posted:
08/14/2016 04:16:47 PM MDT

Updated:
08/15/2016 10:00:48 AM MDT

Former Denver Bronco Simon Fletcher speaks to a joint meeting of the Fort Morgan Evening Optimist and Sunrise Optimist clubs Thursday night at the Country Steak-Out in Fort Morgan. Fletcher offered challenges to the adults and youth in the room to work toward achieving things and get a point where they like the person they see in the mirror. (Jenni Grubbs / Fort Morgan Times)

If Simon Fletcher sees a problem with today's youth, it's that they seem not to understand the value of work.

"Nowadays, it seems like we're raising generations who don't want to do anything," the former Denver Bronco said Thursday night while speaking before a joint session of the Fort Morgan Evening Optimist and Sunrise Optimist clubs at the Country Steak-Out. "Someone's got to take the ball and run with it."

But while the former pro football player and current restauranteur spoke some about what he sees that is wrong with people and the United States in general, he also talked about how that could change and issued several challenges to his audience of a wide range of ages.

Former Denver Bronco Simon Fletcher eats and chats with Fort Morgan Evening Optimist Club members Thursday night at the Country Steak-Out in Fort Morgan. The joint meeting of the Evening and Sunrise Optimist clubs drew a large crowd to hear Fletcher speak. (Jenni Grubbs / Fort Morgan Times)

Fletcher spoke at length about his upbringing and the grandparents, parents and coaches who shaped him into who he is and taught him what he could accomplish if he put effort into it.

"Coach Brown helped to unleash in me something my grandparents worked to instill in me — work ethic," he told the Optimists.

He challenged the adults in the room to do the same for today's youths, giving them an example of how working for something pays off and then pushing the kids to become hard workers, themselves.

Fletcher also advocated for renewed patriotism and pride in the United States of America.

"I would like to see a resurgence in American optimism that says, 'It starts with me,'" he said.

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He quoted President John F. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country," calling this one of the most important statements in American history.

"I think we're at a state right now in our country where each of us has to ask ourselves that question," Fletcher said. "At no point in our history, at least in my lifetime, has this country needed that more."

But any change would have to start somewhere, he said.

"It all starts in meetings like this, where young people are told, 'It starts with you,'" Fletcher said, and there were many children and teens in the audience with their eyes on the former Denver Bronco, listening to his every word. "If you don't develop a work ethic ... push yourself to go a little further, you're going nowhere."

When he was first starting out in football, he had a coach who required the team to run five 50-yard dashes, called "5-50s." At the time, it felt like pointless running, Fletcher said, but he later came to understand the purpose.

In recent years, speaking to that coach as an adult, Fletcher said he told him, "I understand. If we condition ourselves to push a little further repetitively, then what is asked of us, we can do it on race day."

Fletcher also recalled Broncos head coach Dan Reeves watching him during training and conditioning, during which Reeves would "make up his mind about what you could become and then push you to reach it."

That's what Fletcher said adults need to do for the kids they're around.

"For everything you get, you have a responsibility to give, even if that giving's just helping around the house," he said.

Adults also need to help kids find things to believe in and work toward achievements related to those beliefs, he said.

"When you can get a purpose that's bigger than that person you see in the mirror, all of a sudden, it doesn't feel like work," he said.

And Fletcher made an impression on many of the kids who were listening to him. One of those kids was 14-year-old Harrison Godin from Fort Morgan.

"It kind of sparked me to do something to help the community, do more for people, do something for America," he said.

Wyatt Ruppel, 13, of Fort Morgan, said Fletcher's speech was "very inspirational" and had made him think.

Nina Lorenzen, an 18-year-old from Germany, was back in Fort Morgan visiting her former foreign exchange host family and she got to come hear Fletcher speak to the Optimists.

"I liked that someone like him takes the time to talk to young people, and I hope that they get something out of it," she said.

Afterward, Fletcher said he had noticed that the young people in the audience had been watching him and seemed to have been listening.

"They're already on the right track, but they need constant encouragement," he told the Fort Morgan Times. "If they can find something as simple as me to keep them going, the sky is the limit of their future."

And Evening Optimist Club member Michael Geiger, who arranged for Fletcher to speak at the joint session of the two clubs, said he was quite happy with how it turned out.

"I had no idea what his message was going to be, but it was absolutely point on,"Geiger said.

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